“Can we skip grammar practice just this one time?”
“Can we have an extra day to do our homework?”
“Can we do 10 math problems today instead of 20?”
The requests are followed by a cacophony of sweet and impassioned pleas. “Please Mr. Fluffy! Please! Please! Please!”
And it’s hard to say no.
Because it feels good to make students happy. It’s feels good to hear them cheer and see their excitement. Furthermore, it’s no skin off your hide. At least, not in the moment.
“Well . . . I guess it wouldn’t hurt.”
And for a few seconds, anyway, they love you. They smile and coo and you smile right back. It’s all good. A symbiotical kumbaya.
Oh, but it isn’t. No, no, no. It’s a mistake, you see, that makes your teaching life more difficult.
Here’s why:
You’ll open the floodgates.
Once you give in, even one time, you’ll open the floodgates and every planned activity will feel like a negotiation. You’ll be hit from every side, battered like a lost dingy at sea.
You’ll be stuck defending your decisions, explaining the importance of each lesson, and trying in vain to sell the value of hard work, discipline, and mental challenge.
You’ll battle disappointment.
Merely following your schedule will be a downer to your students. Announcing your math lesson or essay assignment will result not in eager readiness, but in audible sighs.
Anything less than novelty or surprise relief will be a crushing blow. This isn’t an exaggeration. No matter the age, give an inch and they’ll want a mile.
You’ll encourage immaturity.
Maturity is the result of asking more, better, and higher—daily and in every area of scholarship. It’s in pushing greater independence and responsibility.
It’s in ownership, acceptance, and overcoming obstacles and one’s own natural propensity to take the easy way out. Giving in encourages a search for the exit ramp. It encourages excuses and poor effort, which are hallmarks of immaturity.
You’ll send the wrong message.
If you give in to please your students, you’ll send the message that the activity in question is inherently distasteful. It doesn’t have value or reward in and of itself.
Otherwise, you wouldn’t concede to getting rid of it. Their satisfaction, therefore, is in not doing it rather than the opposite. This is a terrible message that undermines your goal of instilling the love of learning and doing hard things.
How to Respond
The best way to respond to pleading is to immediately say no.
Because once you pause, you’re in trouble. So don’t pause. Say no and press on without looking back. Decide ahead of time that whatever you have planned, unless there is an unforeseen and unusual circumstance, you’re going to do.
Never leave a shred of doubt as to the benefit of persistent study and learning.
This is the only way to turn the tide on “kids these days” who don’t care and have little interest in academics. You make them care over time by supporting the great strain for academic excellence.
Giving in subverts appreciation for what is valuable and lasting.
So embrace the hard with urgency. Seek what is challenging. Push toward the unknown. Attack with enthusiasm and can’t-wait excitement.
Show your students that in the midst of struggle is where they’ll find beauty and the greatest joy.
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this is excellent! In my school, the kids will do this constant begging and I always give in. I thought I was making them happy with me as a substitute teacher. The students call me their favorite substitute teacher! Now I know why! for my own standards of learning excellence I have to be tougher with the kids. Let me practice, “No!”
First off, I mean absolutely no disrespect to you. I hate it when guest teachers don’t follow the plans that I put together. You won’t understand until you have to start writing them yourself. It takes me anywhere from half to an hour to make plans, and that’s MY time spent. It’s wasted time if they aren’t followed. For the sake of the teachers that you sub for, please follow the plans.
I agree with YoTeach but as obsessive as I am/was, it would take me 2-3 hours to create my sub plans. It is very much appreciated when the plans are followed. My goal has always been to make it feel as though learning is going on even if I am not in the room. I remember being a 6th grader and I thought of a sub as a “free day”.
I agree and disagree. If they ask me if we’re doing work, or “Do we have to?” Like of course we are doing work! But if they want to, let’s say stop 2 minutes early, AND I was already planning on stopping, then I think it’s okay to lean into this a little. This is just my opinion though!
In the case that they request, “Can we end 2 class minutes early?” You can say, “We have completed our objectives or goals for this lesson. We are finished so my plan is to end the lesson as usual.”
So good! I have been consistently implementing SCM strategies for two years now! It works!!!! I observe the excitement within students when perseverance is met with success which leads to student fulfillment and accomplishment!
Thank you! Totally agree with you.
Great article! I agree this everything about this approach. I never agree to things my students beg, whine, and plead for. I’d rather surprise and delight them with rewards and privileges that they didn’t ask for and weren’t expecting. Thank you for your content! I always find something valuable that helps me to reinforce my decisions or reconsider my routines.
My students rarely ask these things because they know the answer is always “no.” I sometimes elaborate and say, “Learning proper grammar is a very important skill, and I care that you learn it because I care about YOU.” That works because they know it’s true. It has taken a year and a half at the alternative high school where I now teach English and history, but I now have the quiet, calm classroom Michael says we can all have. Adults walk into my classroom and hear classical music playing and see students quietly doing their work. Students who are completely disruptive in other classrooms. Yesterday, my sophomores painted rocks. It was organized chaos but everyone followed the rules and it was beautiful to watch them around a big table laughing and enjoying their activity. Later, my principal, who had stepped in a couple of times, said it was the most therapeutic classroom he had ever seen. I credit Michael and SCM, which I have been following for many years. SO—say no! with love, and keep raising the bar !
That is an amazing story that makes my heart so glad! Alternative Learning is not an easy place to be, but those kids usually have stories many of us never could imagine. I’m so glad they have YOU! and SCM of course!
The only thing I’ll negotiate on is if I announce a test & students say they already have a couple other tests that day, then I’ll treat them like adults and say, “ok. When is a better date?” It’s always later :). But that’s ok bc I let them know we will simply start the next unit on the test day. We will not simply do “more review”. I think these sorts of negotiations are perfectly reasonable.
I will say it’s very dangerous territory & unlike my first couple years, I don’t negotiate on anything like “can we just stop now?” It’s actually sort of fun to just say something like “what?!? No!” with a comical tone. That said, I think it’s important to read the room when these questions start happening & honestly ask myself if I need to shorten the lecture a little or do something to make class a little more interesting if possible.
This couldn’t have come at a better time. I took over a grade 6 class mid-year and almost every other day there’s whinging, ‘can we play a game?’, ‘can we watch a movie?’, ‘can we not do this today?’, ‘oh, the other teacher used to play games with us!’ I refused every single time, but it has been extremely tough and many times I keep thinking of just giving in to their demands. This post gives me strength.
Yes! Bless you – I took over a class that had run off 3 teachers and they were determined I would be teacher #4. However with great help from above they did not run me off and we made significant math progress that year and the next. Keep up the good work with SCM and find YOUR path to reward students for hard work and learning.
Giving in to whinging and whining just teaches them to whinge and whine more. If thy think you’ll give in, they’ll try it every time. Same thing with your own kids in the grocery store or at home. I’ve never had a public temper tantrum. My kids learned EARLY that it will never work.